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The Pirate Bay leaves Sweden for friendlier waters

TPB decamps for Spain and Norway after Swedish Pirate Party is threatened.

The Swedish Pirate Party has stopped hosting the notorious website The Pirate Bay, according to TorrentFreak. While no one knows where the site is actually run from, Web-hosting services have been provided through the Swedish Pirate Party for a few years now.

Now, the site's hosting will be taken care of by the Pirate Parties in Norway and Spain. TPB is being forced to move because the Swedish Pirate Party is under pressure from Rights Alliance, a Swedish anti-piracy group representing large music and movie interests. Rights Alliance threatened legal action against the Pirate Party if the group didn't stop hosting the site by tomorrow.

Spain in particular could turn out to be a safe haven for the piracy-driven website, since judges in that country have found simply linking to other infringing sites is not a basis for copyright liability. The sports-streaming site Rojadirecta, for example, was exonerated after legal action against it was initiated in Spain. (That didn't stop it from having its domain name grabbed by a US agency, before being given back last summer.)

The Pirate Bay is a decade old now, and was recently the subject of a 90-minute documentary called TPB AFK. One of the site's three co-founders is currently in exile in Laos, avoiding Swedish arrest warrants.

Why not Switzerland? I only hear nothing but problems from other countries and companies of why the country is so friggin awesome towards it's citizens and people. When it comes to money, privacy, guns and f**** ethics, they have it spot on.

It seems wrong to link to Youtube to watch a documentary about a pirate site when you can torrent it.

...Not to mention the risk it might be malware if TPB is your source.

malware? in a video?You obviously don't internet much.

Not sure if /s so...

Any torrent user worth their salt can easily avoid malware if they go to the rights sites and pay attention to the stats and comments. You can of course utilize anti-malware programs and sandboxing for additional protection.

Why not Switzerland? I only hear nothing but problems from other countries and companies of why the country is so friggin awesome towards it's citizens and people. When it comes to money, privacy, guns and f**** ethics, they have it spot on.

Well as long as you're a White Christian at least...

OT: I wonder how long it'll be once TPB anchors in Spain/Norway before ministers start getting large checks in the mail and fancy paid-for vacations by some "anonymous" donors...

"...the Swedish Pirate Party is under pressure from Rights Alliance, a Swedish anti-piracy group representing large music and movie interests."

IOW: The RIAA and MPAA branch of our Corporate Oligarchy. New name, same old overlords.

These same 'goons' are currently attempting to foist CISPA again on the USA. They are also infamous for foisting the scandalous SOPA/PIPA legislation. They're also attempting to foist various renditions of ACTA ('Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement) on the world. All of this attempted worldwide legislation curtails natural rights of privacy and speech.

What these brain dead oligarchs find impossible to learn: The more you ABUSE your customers (DRM, outrageous fines, computer root kits, unconstitutional attacks on privacy and free speech, ad nauseam), the more those customers are INSPIRED to HATE you and commit RETRIBUTION by PIRATING your media. It could not be more simple, inevitable or self-destructive. Sheesh. (0_o)

OT: I wonder how long it'll be once TPB anchors in Spain/Norway before ministers start getting large checks in the mail and fancy paid-for vacations by some "anonymous" donors...

Oh, its already past that in Norway. I dunno what TPB was thinking by moving to Norway: the country's govt has obviously done some backroom deal with the US authorities: 1) Suddenly all kinds of US-based services are opening up in Norway in the past 6 months. Norwegians can for example get HBO's HBO Nordic digital streaming service , which offers their programs direct on a purely digital basis, with zero ties to any local cable companies. You can't even do that in the US. And wont ever.2) Simultaneously the Norwegian govt has proposed legal changes that would:- make it possible for the govt to order ISPs to block specific websites, with the Pirate Bay even mentioned specifically by the govt minister as an example of what type of websites they would block- track IP addresses and allow copyright owners to sue the holder of the IP address for any infringing activity

Yeah, there's obviously been a deal done here. Norway is really no place that TPB will be for very long.

They dont need to send a check to any minister or politician. The way it is done over in Norway is that said person does what they are asked to do by private business interests, then later "retires" from govt service with a huge pension and then gets hired as a "lobbyist", "director", "consultant" etc by whomever they were really serving while they were in office. I suppose you could call it doing a "Michael Powell"....

Why is it that "groups" representing "large ** interests" always translates to "a bunch of gotdamn dickheads strong-arm yet more money from those who can least afford it in a mad economic power grab for the greediest motherfuckers evar"?Why is it never "Industry with highest profits gives back by funding development of awesome hoverboard that runs on the ever-sustainable power of titties"? WHY!?!?

Many video players have had and may still have serious vulnerabilities where a specifically crafted video file would be malicious.

As operating systems have matured, the malware attacks have switched to target applications instead. This is especially prominent with Flash player and Adobe reader, but has been an issue in a lot of other applications like Winamp and possibly even your torrent client if used for preview of malicious data files...

OT: I wonder how long it'll be once TPB anchors in Spain/Norway before ministers start getting large checks in the mail and fancy paid-for vacations by some "anonymous" donors...

Oh, its already past that in Norway. I dunno what TPB was thinking by moving to Norway: the country's govt has obviously done some backroom deal with the US authorities: 1) Suddenly all kinds of US-based services are opening up in Norway in the past 6 months. Norwegians can for example get HBO's HBO Nordic digital streaming service , which offers their programs direct on a purely digital basis, with zero ties to any local cable companies. You can't even do that in the US. And wont ever.

You do still need a subscription with an ISP to access the internet, so that you can access the streaming sites. Yes, some of them have their own CDN, but that doesn't mean the entire connection is separate from the public internet.

Quote:

2) Simultaneously the Norwegian govt has proposed legal changes that would:- make it possible for the govt to order ISPs to block specific websites, with the Pirate Bay even mentioned specifically by the govt minister as an example of what type of websites they would block- track IP addresses and allow copyright owners to sue the holder of the IP address for any infringing activity

Yeah, there's obviously been a deal done here. Norway is really no place that TPB will be for very long.

They dont need to send a check to any minister or politician. The way it is done over in Norway is that said person does what they are asked to do by private business interests, then later "retires" from govt service with a huge pension and then gets hired as a "lobbyist", "director", "consultant" etc by whomever they were really serving while they were in office. I suppose you could call it doing a "Michael Powell"....

How 'bout some sources? We have two incidents from the Norwegian court system that gives precedence to allowing TPB to be hosted here:In 2009, some court decided that Telenor, our largest ISP by far, did not have to block TPB because giving them internet access is not a criminal offense. (http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-loses-tele ... ay-091106/)Also fairly recently, a lawyer firm's permission to match IPs to real persons was withdrawn. This means that today, we do not have pirate hunters in Norway. (Google Translate: http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... ne&act=url)

Norway is as good a destination for TPB as anywhere else. There are more than 50 Pirate Parties worldwide. Just sayin'!

OT: I wonder how long it'll be once TPB anchors in Spain/Norway before ministers start getting large checks in the mail and fancy paid-for vacations by some "anonymous" donors...

That's what numbered accounts in places like Switzerland are for. Nice and anonymous for the receipt of those large cheques.

Switzerland has several tax treaties with other countries (e.g. the US) and those accounts are NOT anonymous.

Carbon Fibre wrote:

Why not Switzerland? I only hear nothing but problems from other countries and companies of why the country is so friggin awesome towards it's citizens and people. When it comes to money, privacy, guns and f**** ethics, they have it spot on.

How 'bout some sources? We have two incidents from the Norwegian court system that gives precedence to allowing TPB to be hosted here:In 2009, some court decided that Telenor, our largest ISP by far, did not have to block TPB because giving them internet access is not a criminal offense. (http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-loses-tele ... ay-091106/)Also fairly recently, a lawyer firm's permission to match IPs to real persons was withdrawn. This means that today, we do not have pirate hunters in Norway. (Google Translate: http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... ne&act=url)

Norway is as good a destination for TPB as anywhere else. There are more than 50 Pirate Parties worldwide. Just sayin'!

There is heavy pressure to rework the relevant laws to be more "supportive of artists"...

How 'bout some sources? We have two incidents from the Norwegian court system that gives precedence to allowing TPB to be hosted here:In 2009, some court decided that Telenor, our largest ISP by far, did not have to block TPB because giving them internet access is not a criminal offense. (http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-loses-tele ... ay-091106/)Also fairly recently, a lawyer firm's permission to match IPs to real persons was withdrawn. This means that today, we do not have pirate hunters in Norway. (Google Translate: http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... ne&act=url)

Norway is as good a destination for TPB as anywhere else. There are more than 50 Pirate Parties worldwide. Just sayin'!

There is heavy pressure to rework the relevant laws to be more "supportive of artists"...

Yeah, that's the guise it goes under, except the Norwegian artist have themselve come out in the papers saying this is BS as they themelves receive literally no more than pennies from streaming services.

How 'bout some sources? We have two incidents from the Norwegian court system that gives precedence to allowing TPB to be hosted here:In 2009, some court decided that Telenor, our largest ISP by far, did not have to block TPB because giving them internet access is not a criminal offense. (http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-loses-tele ... ay-091106/)Also fairly recently, a lawyer firm's permission to match IPs to real persons was withdrawn. This means that today, we do not have pirate hunters in Norway. (Google Translate: http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... ne&act=url)

Norway is as good a destination for TPB as anywhere else. There are more than 50 Pirate Parties worldwide. Just sayin'!

There is heavy pressure to rework the relevant laws to be more "supportive of artists"...

That's true, and things will definitely change. But for now I think the exit node in Norway will stay intact. My main reason for thinking so is the upcoming election in September. If they were to take down the exit node immediately, the Norwegian Pirate Party would likely gain uncomfortable amounts of support.

How 'bout some sources? We have two incidents from the Norwegian court system that gives precedence to allowing TPB to be hosted here:In 2009, some court decided that Telenor, our largest ISP by far, did not have to block TPB because giving them internet access is not a criminal offense. (http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-loses-tele ... ay-091106/)Also fairly recently, a lawyer firm's permission to match IPs to real persons was withdrawn. This means that today, we do not have pirate hunters in Norway. (Google Translate: http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... ne&act=url)

Norway is as good a destination for TPB as anywhere else. There are more than 50 Pirate Parties worldwide. Just sayin'!

There is heavy pressure to rework the relevant laws to be more "supportive of artists"...

That's true, and things will definitely change. But for now I think the exit node in Norway will stay intact. My main reason for thinking so is the upcoming election in September. If they were to take down the exit node immediately, the Norwegian Pirate Party would likely gain uncomfortable amounts of support.

That will not move the needle on the Norwegian political scene - everyone is busy trying to get their pound of flesh (or oil money in this case). There are far more pertinent special interests than the Pirate party.

OT: I wonder how long it'll be once TPB anchors in Spain/Norway before ministers start getting large checks in the mail and fancy paid-for vacations by some "anonymous" donors...

Oh, its already past that in Norway. I dunno what TPB was thinking by moving to Norway: the country's govt has obviously done some backroom deal with the US authorities: 1) Suddenly all kinds of US-based services are opening up in Norway in the past 6 months. Norwegians can for example get HBO's HBO Nordic digital streaming service , which offers their programs direct on a purely digital basis, with zero ties to any local cable companies. You can't even do that in the US. And wont ever.

You do still need a subscription with an ISP to access the internet, so that you can access the streaming sites. Yes, some of them have their own CDN, but that doesn't mean the entire connection is separate from the public internet.

How 'bout some sources? We have two incidents from the Norwegian court system that gives precedence to allowing TPB to be hosted here:In 2009, some court decided that Telenor, our largest ISP by far, did not have to block TPB because giving them internet access is not a criminal offense. (http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-loses-tele ... ay-091106/)Also fairly recently, a lawyer firm's permission to match IPs to real persons was withdrawn. This means that today, we do not have pirate hunters in Norway. (Google Translate: http://translate.google.com/translate?s ... ne&act=url)

Norway is as good a destination for TPB as anywhere else. There are more than 50 Pirate Parties worldwide. Just sayin'!

There is heavy pressure to rework the relevant laws to be more "supportive of artists"...

That's true, and things will definitely change. But for now I think the exit node in Norway will stay intact. My main reason for thinking so is the upcoming election in September. If they were to take down the exit node immediately, the Norwegian Pirate Party would likely gain uncomfortable amounts of support.

That will not move the needle on the Norwegian political scene - everyone is busy trying to get their pound of flesh (or oil money in this case). There are far more pertinent special interests than the Pirate party.

And this is why IFPI representatives are allowed to compare copyright infringement with child porn exchanges, because copyright as a whole is a boring issue.

Norway has had, since the dawn of the cassette tape, an exemption that allowed people to exchange copied cassettes with friends and family. This in part because the people in charge at the time recognized that to properly police home copying of music they would in essence need to put a police man in every home across the nation. As such, i suspect that at least in part the current behavior has grown out of that.

And that we also have gotten a split society regarding copyright. Those that only encountered it at home regarding prerecorded media, and those that actively worked with it in the press and other such industries. The former likely could not care less, as producing a copy would be a neighborly act (especially once computers became commonplace and you popped by the neighbor to borrow the install media for a program or other). The latter however could find themselves without a job if they were caught violating copyright, as it likely would cost the company they worked for dearly. End result is that you have one group, made up of most of society, that could not care less, and a smaller group of insiders for whom it can border on life or death.

BTW, i do not think the lady has any direct say in the matter. She likely just inherited the proposed law from her predecessor. This is a process that has been going for years, including a heavily constrained panel of experts. I say heavily constrained because their mandate was specifically limited to only suggest changes that would carry forward the basic idea of copyright, not evaluate if it has any purpose any longer in the modern era.

It is after all a idea that came into being when the printing press was fairly new and the act of producing copies were, while sharply reduced from when monks and scribes hand wrote each page, still fairly labor intensive.

OT: I wonder how long it'll be once TPB anchors in Spain/Norway before ministers start getting large checks in the mail and fancy paid-for vacations by some "anonymous" donors...

Oh, its already past that in Norway. I dunno what TPB was thinking by moving to Norway: the country's govt has obviously done some backroom deal with the US authorities: 1) Suddenly all kinds of US-based services are opening up in Norway in the past 6 months. Norwegians can for example get HBO's HBO Nordic digital streaming service , which offers their programs direct on a purely digital basis, with zero ties to any local cable companies. You can't even do that in the US. And wont ever.

You do still need a subscription with an ISP to access the internet, so that you can access the streaming sites. Yes, some of them have their own CDN, but that doesn't mean the entire connection is separate from the public internet.

OT: I wonder how long it'll be once TPB anchors in Spain/Norway before ministers start getting large checks in the mail and fancy paid-for vacations by some "anonymous" donors...

Oh, its already past that in Norway. I dunno what TPB was thinking by moving to Norway: the country's govt has obviously done some backroom deal with the US authorities: 1) Suddenly all kinds of US-based services are opening up in Norway in the past 6 months. Norwegians can for example get HBO's HBO Nordic digital streaming service , which offers their programs direct on a purely digital basis, with zero ties to any local cable companies. You can't even do that in the US. And wont ever.

You do still need a subscription with an ISP to access the internet, so that you can access the streaming sites. Yes, some of them have their own CDN, but that doesn't mean the entire connection is separate from the public internet.

The line is blurred in that cable tv setups can also carry data by cramming what amounts to a mobile phone network into their cables.

Main point I was making is that HBO sells Scandinavians a streaming service direct, which they dont do in the US, where you need to pay for a cable TV channel subscription first. Yes the cable cos have more power in the US, but cant help but think more has been promised by the various govts, Norway included, where suddenly they are making drastic legal changes quite favourable to the likes of HBO and quite extreme ones in the context of the country's traditions.

OT: I wonder how long it'll be once TPB anchors in Spain/Norway before ministers start getting large checks in the mail and fancy paid-for vacations by some "anonymous" donors...

Hopefully real soon, since that is very illegal here in Norway and a very good way for a politician to lose his/her job, not to mention attempted bribery for the RIAA goons. Win-win!

No politicians ever gets large checks in mail or fancy paid for vacations by anonymous donors.

They merely get incredibly expensive birthday gifts from close acquaintances or chargable business meetings with known business associates.

Ofcourse, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Nope. Still illegal. They're not allowed to accept gifts, period. This of course doesn't mean it never happens, but there's pretty much zero tolerance for anything that even remotely smells like corruption, and that includes things like a business dinner or expensive gifts from acquaintances.

there's pretty much zero tolerance for anything that even remotely smells like corruption, and that includes things like a business dinner or expensive gifts from acquaintances.

This is not true. Politicians and regulators walk right from public office into lucrative private sector jobs in the very industries they are supposed to have been regulating. You can sat this doesnt smell like corruption. It many be legal but its well within bounds for possibility for and suspicion of corruption and bias.

Whether the influence is paid for in advance or after the fact, it can still be a corrupt influence.

OT: I wonder how long it'll be once TPB anchors in Spain/Norway before ministers start getting large checks in the mail and fancy paid-for vacations by some "anonymous" donors...

Hopefully real soon, since that is very illegal here in Norway and a very good way for a politician to lose his/her job, not to mention attempted bribery for the RIAA goons. Win-win!

No politicians ever gets large checks in mail or fancy paid for vacations by anonymous donors.

They merely get incredibly expensive birthday gifts from close acquaintances or chargable business meetings with known business associates.

Ofcourse, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Nope. Still illegal. They're not allowed to accept gifts, period. This of course doesn't mean it never happens, but there's pretty much zero tolerance for anything that even remotely smells like corruption, and that includes things like a business dinner or expensive gifts from acquaintances.

I'm pretty sure it's illegal in Sweden too, but that doesn't mean the music industry doesn't do it. Since they're "the good guys" it's probably seen as not a problem.

I will never watch any video content from a torrent. Having to wait for it to finish downloading before I start watching is a deal breaker.

I'm nearly 100% opposite. I'll frequently d/l youtube content because I get fed up with bottlenecked streams, esp. 720/1080 content. Most times, youtube is fine, but there are times when I get stuck in the middle of a movie that drives me absolutely crazy. Or when it decides to rebuffer after I skipped ahead 5 sec. Or any other weird youtube hiccup. Instead, I'll just d/l the whole thing, watch it w/far better control (re: ff/rev/pause/etc.), and toss it when I'm done (and d/l the next content while watching this one, so there's really no wait).